


Magnetic Declination

by Queue



Series: Who the Hell Are We? [2]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, M/M, turning point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:27:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never was a morning person, never will be--but thanks to Easy, and specifically to Winters, Lewis hasn't been able to stay under past dawn since Carentan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magnetic Declination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Java Genie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Java+Genie).



> This is a bit--perhaps more than a bit--of an AU. It follows canon until the point at which Winters is offered the chance to join the Army as a career man. At that point, this universe diverges as follows: Winters takes the job. After five years spent on active duty somewhere irrelevant to the story, he becomes a teacher of field tactics (and probably also English) at West Point. He marries, but his wife dies within a year and he does not marry again. Nixon returns to Yale, finishes his undergraduate degree there, proceeds to get a PhD in theatre (for which he has a canonical fondness), and joins the faculty as a professor of drama. After his marriage founders on the shoals of his alcoholism, he quits drinking (and marrying, for that matter). When we meet them at the outset of this story, it's 1965. Winters has been teaching at West Point for 15 years; Nixon has had tenure at Yale for ten.

On Sunday, Lewis claws his way up out of sleep when it's just barely light outside. Never was a morning person, never will be--but thanks to Easy, and specifically to Winters, he hasn't been able to stay under past dawn since Carentan.

It's an odd light this morning--morning? yeah, so the watch slid halfway around his wrist insists. Part of that is Chicago, the haze and murk of discontented commerce done by men who were civilized once. Part of it is the glasses Lewis tries not to need and so tends to leave halfway across whatever room he's in any time he travels.

Part of it is Winters.

Part of it has always been Winters.

This time it's Winters at the window, up before Lewis and half-profile to the breaking day as he looks out at whatever Chicago's too tired to hide this early on a weekend morning. The silver in his hair surprises Lewis--Christ, there's no way they're that old already--but the weary twist to his mouth is painfully familiar. Lewis groans into the pillow, a noise he knows Winters can't ignore even when he wants to, and hauls himself up to a sitting position against their headboard, running a shaky hand through hair he suspects is already standing on end.

"Up before reveille again, eh? Thought rising at oh-dark-thirty might be a thing of the past for you."

Winters, leaning his head on the hand he has holding back the curtain, gives no sign he's heard this opening salvo. Lewis rubs his eyes and wonders why he can't smell their usual room-service coffee, then realizes there's no tray of food on the table, either. As he opens his mouth to complain about this--breakfast, after all, is Winters' job, since it comes at Winters' time of day--Winters finally speaks.

"I don't know what we're doing here, Lewis."

What? _Jesus._ Talk about an unwelcome wake-up call. Lewis closes his mouth with a crack that hurts his jaw, then inhales so hard the rib he broke on the Operation Varsity jump twinges as it hasn't done in years. "What?"

He can't have heard that right.

But: "I don't know what we're doing here," Winters says again.

"Don't." Lewis feels the blood drain from his face. After all this time... "God, Dick, don't say that. How can you say that?"

"I can't not." Winters' voice is strangely dull, hard to hear above the pounding in Lewis's ears.

Scrambling for safe footing in the minefield their conversation's become, Lewis takes refuge in sarcasm. "Dubious grammatical choice, Professor, _sir_. Whatever would your students say?"

Winters raises a silver-red eyebrow at the view out their window. "Same as yours, Nix: nothing, because they wouldn't be awake yet either. Don't duck the question."

"I didn't hear one."

Winters snorts--almost under his breath, the way he does anything he thinks might be defiant. "Then you weren't listening. And you always listen. Always have. Always will."

"Predicting the future now, are you?"

"Well, you're the intelligence officer."

Lewis has never been able to sort out whether that bothered Winters when they lived and almost died on the line, the different ways what they had to offer impressed the men in charge, so that Lewis wound up safe and Winters wound up scarred. He's never asked, either. Three miles up, three miles down, and counting: they've had enough hills to climb without looking for rougher terrain.

Unless, of course, such terrain finds _them_. "Doesn't mean I'm the only one here with a brain and the skills to use it." Lewis can feel his heart beating in the tips of his fingers and the hollow of his throat. It's bad this time. What's going on? "Okay, since you 'ask,' here's my answer. What are we doing here? We're _fucking_, Dick. We're having _sex_."

We're lovers, he thinks but can't trust himself to say, can't--now--trust Winters to hear.

"And as a bonus, I'll tell you what we're _not_ doing here. We are not fucking by accident. This is not coincidence, my friend. This is what we _do_, you and I. First weekend we got back Stateside after V-E Day and at least one weekend every year for twenty years since then. Meeting in cities we never see up close because we never leave the room we rent. Eating in the hotel restaurant Friday evening and making that meal last as long as we can, because we know once we're done we won't be able to keep our goddamned hands off of one another and neither of us--_neither_ of us, Dick--wants to rush that part of the weekend because once it starts it's that much closer to ending. Using every trick we've learned and everything we know to make each other come like fireworks as many times as possible in what little time we have. That's what we're doing here, you and me. This is what we _do_."

Winters comes as close to flinching as Lewis has ever seen, even under nonstop shelling. "I'm not denying any of that."

"Glad to hear it, because as far as I can recall--which oddly enough is just about twenty years back--you've been present and accounted for every time, and as an active participant, no less. In fact, I could have sworn you got a fair amount of pleasure out of the deal, although for all I know--" Lewis stops himself, cold and shaking. Some things he knows he's right about. No point in destroying those just because the rest of what they have is about to fall down around his ears.

"I'm not denying that, either, Nix. I'd be lying if I did. It's been good, what we've had. After Ethel died so soon, so fast, it was the best thing I had for a while. Other years, too. I-- it's been good."

"But."

Winters shakes his head at the Chicago skyline. "No. No 'buts.'"

Fuck. Winters is going to make _him_ say it. Well, fine. Might as well be the one to swing the wrecking ball on his own life. Wouldn't be the first time. "Bullshit, Dick. We wouldn't be having this travesty of a conversation if there wasn't a 'but' on the tip of your goddamned tongue. I know _exactly_ what you're leading up to here, what you're too chickenshit to say." In the distant back of his mind, where he's never not a teacher, Lewis makes a note: chill your voice down to Arctic cold and the toughest line of dialogue will come out without a tremor. "You want to end it. To end _us_."

"NO." Winters swings around, looking Lewis full in the face for the first time since they started this...whatever it is they're doing here, and Lewis's throat all but closes at the pain in his eyes. "Christ, Nix, no, _no_. That's not what I-- Christ, you've got this all wrong."

Jesus. "Well, then, Colonel, enlighten me." Lewis lets himself sound as bitter as he feels, hoping that'll cover up the fearful hope in his voice. He reaches for the glass by his side of the bed and drains it. For a moment, the desire for a drink is so strong he'd swear the water's mixed with Scotch.

Winters sighs, watching him, then crosses to the bed and sits, legs and arms folded, at its foot. He's just out of Lewis's reach. Lewis wonders if he planned it that way.

"They want me in Vietnam." Lewis stares at him, and he grimaces, one side of that long mobile mouth twisting up again. "Yeah. Remember the Devil's Brigade?"

"I think so. Yeah." Lewis lets himself be distracted for a minute--eye of the storm? calm before the final blow?--and sifts through the crazy rumors he heard about the Black Devils while Easy was marking time at Upottery. "Airborne unit. But nonstandard weapons, tactics, personnel. Did some serious damage in Italy and France--nonstop, high-casualty stuff, a lot of work behind enemy lines. Disbanded and reassigned some time end of '44, start of '45."

"Right. Army's name for it was the 1st Special Service Force. Now it's the 5th Special Forces Group. High Command reactivated it in '61 at Fort Bragg and deployed it in 'Nam earlier this year as part of Operation Rolling Thunder." Winters pauses. Then, dryly: "Apparently they're low on field tacticians who can fall out of planes and still read a map when they land."

"And that's where you come in."

"Right again."

"Dick. Jesus." Lewis clenches his hands in the bedclothes to keep from reaching out to the man who's been his best friend, if nothing else, for more than two decades. "Are you going?"

Winters shakes his head slowly. "I don't know."

Wrong answer. Lewis plunges in, desperate. "You're a senior career soldier, Dick, not some raw recruit whose only skill is hatred. You've got your twenty in, man. Plus a key training post, teaching my social peers' precious Pointer progeny how to serve their country without getting killed because they can't take over an enemy gun from the rear. This conflict is bullshit, we both know that--it's a makework war, political meddling without provocation. We've never even been attacked by 'Nam, for Christ's sake, no matter what the Tonkin apologists say. If you don't want this assignment, Command isn't going to force it on you."

Suddenly, every hair on the back of Lewis's neck tries to stand on end at once. Shit. Maybe _that's_ what's driving Winters here: he lied before, he _does_ wants to end them, and he thinks this is the only way to do it cleanly. "Do you? _Do_ you want it? Are you going, Dick? Is that what you're not telling me here? Because--"

Winters shakes his head again. "I told you, Nix, I don't _know_. Not yet. They've given me the option, but they've made clear that's all it is. It's up to me to choose, and I haven't yet."

Yet.

"Just ... Hell, Lewis, after twenty years, it's pretty obvious I'm 4-F."

Lewis gapes at him. "You're _what_?"

"Four-"

"All right, damn it, I heard you the first time. I just didn't think I'd heard you _right._" Lewis's brain seems to be firing on all cylinders again, thank God. "If memory serves--and after ten years dry and tenured both, I'd like to think what the War left me works as well now as it ever did--you're 4-_A_. Or 2-B--you started teaching in '50, Dick, you've been 2-B for as long as I have."

"Last time I checked, MEPS standards still said sleeping with other men makes you morally unfit for combat."

"Last time _I_ checked, nobody was applying MEPS standards to decorated twenty-year veterans with a matched brace of eagles on their collar."

Winters grins, or something like it. "Fair enough. Though some of what the Army seems to care about these days might surprise you, if you weren't living too far up that ivory tower to hear it." Lewis splutters in protest, but Winters waves him off. "Anyway. Doesn't matter. I'm not ashamed of what-- of _who_ I am. Of our-- of our friendship. Of the time we spend together. Of what we do with that time. I am _not_, Nix. I never have been. I need you to hear me on that."

"Then what--"

"Shut up, damn it. I'm telling you. Trying to, anyway." Lewis subsides, and Winters goes on. "This assignment-- Command called Friday at 0730, just before I got in the car to come here. The timing left me with a good many hours to consider matters. My life. The Army. How much those two things overlap, and how much they maybe shouldn't." Winters opens his hands in his lap, turning them over and back like they're new to him and he's got to memorize every detail, every line.

Lewis could help him with that. Instead, he listens, and tries to remember to breathe.

"It got me thinking, Nix. If I jumped tomorrow and I didn't make it back, who would the Army notify? My parents and Ethel are dead. The only friends West Point knows about wear the same faculty ring I do and respect the hell out of me as the 'Quaker colonel,' but that's about where our relationships stop and I can't say that bothers me much. If I died overseas, in Southeast Asian swamps or on the steppes of the USSR or wherever the troop train took me, the Point office would get in touch with the _Times_ and the _Post_ and whoever was keeping the Easy reunion roster that year and pretty much call it a day."

Winters' hands clench abruptly into fists, so hard Lewis can see the white gleam of knuckles even without his glasses. "No one would call you, Lewis. No one would call you, because no one would know to. No one would know there was anything different between us, that I had any other tie to you than three years' service in the same damned company in the same damned war. And one thing I realized on that Friday drive, staring through my windshield for all those hours, is that I can't live with that any more. I can't keep doing this the way we have been. One weekend a year, just as you said. Two, with luck, and I'm too much of a soldier to count on luck until it's already come and gone. One weekend a year, and letters in between, and never mind that we live maybe two hours away from one another by car. I want-- I need more. I have no idea what you're thinking here, but if I'm going to keep going with this--I don't know exactly what, but I need more."

"Christ, so do I!" Lewis prays the walls aren't as thin as they looked in passing Friday night, because he can't contain himself any more. "Christ, Dick, so do I. I just--I didn't want to ask, didn't want to mess us up. Mess _you_ up. I mean, Jesus, I teach at Yale. I live in a little town full of academics and liberals and a rapidly increasing number of long-haired anti-establishment types who seem to be breeding like rabbits. Not to mention the fact that, as we know, I am a tenured professor of _drama_. I teach fucking _theatre_. As long as I show up for my classes on time, publish something about Anouilh or Genet every once in a while in a journal nobody reads, and don't produce anything too shocking on the main stage, I can do pretty much what I like. Whereas you...you're still in the Army, Dick, with all the complications and restrictions that entails. You're a career Army man. I thought the Army was your life. And I just--I never wanted to ask for more, y'know? Just in case--"

"In case I said 'no.'" Winters is looking down at the hand Lewis has stretched out to him across the worn hotel bedspread, so Lewis can't read his face. But his voice...

A knot just under Lewis's right shoulder blade relaxes unexpectedly, and he suppresses a shudder as the pain ebbs.

"In case you said 'no.' Way I figured it, one or two weekends a year's a whole lot better than nothing." Lewis barks out a laugh, shivering as the sea change from dread to hope washes over him. "Talk about chickenshit. Who'd have thought, after so many years, that the two of us would have been so fucking scared to talk to each other about something this important?"

"Hah. Yeah." Winters picks up Lewis's hand, holding it between the rough warmth of his own, and looks into Lewis's eyes. He's not smiling, but Lewis didn't expect him to be; he can read Winters better than any book he's ever had, and he knows relief on that beyond-familiar face when he sees it.

"All right. All right. Christ." Lewis thinks for a minute. "Then let's do something different here. Let's change things. Before you decide--either way, Dick--come and visit me."

Winters opens his mouth, but Lewis overrides him: he may have switched out his captain's bars for a faculty hood years ago, but he still knows a vital crossroads when he's faced with one. "Come on, man. Christ knows the Army gives you time off, and I know you--you no more take it now than you did when you wasted that day pass to Paris before Bastogne. The school year's almost over, and if you tell me you need the summer to plan your classes after fifteen years of teaching baby officers how to survive in the field, I'll call bullshit before you can draw another breath. Put in for leave and come to stay with me for a while. New Haven's no Paradise, but it's home, a college town with everything that implies, and-- God, Dick, I'd love to show you Yale. Show you my school, my students, my classroom and theatres. My house. Introduce you to my dogs, maybe even my ex-wife. Give you a taste of what it's like to be--"

"Safe."

"Saf_er_, anyway." He's never lied to Winters--not once, from the VAT 69 in his footlocker on. If he had, he'd do it again right now, what with his life--their lives, once again--on the line. But that's not what they do, he and Dick--not as friends, not as lovers, not as Toccoa men and true soldiers: they may fight dirty, but they win fair and square. "I did warn you it wasn't Paradise. But it's peaceful, Dick--quiet, private--and I think you need that. I know I do. Give it a chance."

Give _us_ one, Lewis thinks. But he's not going to say that now.

Not here. Not yet.

The room goes quiet. Lewis tries not to hold his breath, tries not to start running his mouth again. Tries not to blow the best thing he's ever had, could ever hope to have, solely by virtue of failing to keep _stumm_.

Just as he's about to give up and beg: "All right. Yes. I-- Yes. Let's do it."

"Soon, you bastard," Lewis says, half-laughing so he won't embarrass them both.

"Soon, Nix. I promise. I'll come. I want to."

Lewis leans back, pulling his hand out of Winters' and reaching for his cigarettes on the bedside table. Winters sits where he landed minutes--hours?--ago, back as ramrod-straight as ever, and watches Lewis fumble with his lighter. Damn thing doesn't seem to want to strike as it should this morning.

Finally Winters leans forward. "Give me that." He gets a flame on the first try, of course, and lights the cigarette Lewis has in his mouth. "Wish you wouldn't, Nix. It's not good for your wind."

Lewis blows him a smoke circle and grins at him through it, lightheaded with happiness. "One addiction at a time, Dick. One addiction at a time."

**Author's Note:**

> If Java Genie hadn't asked for it, this story would never have happened. If you're pleased it did, credit her; if you wish it hadn't, blame me. Any errors herein are mine alone.


End file.
